Altered

“How did you rip through Arras?” Dante asks.

“I was really pissed off,” I admit.

“Can you channel that, but maybe over at the wall?” Dante suggests. “If you severed the time over there, we could pull it through his strands.”

This is why I asked for Dante’s help. His second set of eyes proves invaluable. I’d been planning on severing the time of the room within Albert, which might have gotten messy.

“It would help if I was pissed off,” I point out.

“You need help getting there? Let’s see. Kincaid betrayed you. Planned to alter you. Your sister is in the Coventry, and Arras knows what they’ve done to her. They’ve murdered your f-father.” Dante stumbles on the word. “Your whole world is built on lies. Am I helping?”

I feel the familiar ache of rage rising in my chest.

“And if you don’t do this, we’ll die at the Guild’s hands,” Dante adds softly. “They’ll kill me and him. They’ll kill Jost, Erik. If they don’t turn them into monsters first.”

Something snaps inside, something I’m unwilling to reason with or fight, and I reach out and rend the weave of the room. It splits down the middle in a jagged line. As it hangs open, the room around us starts to change. Furniture cracks and the walls crumble down. The room is unwinding on itself.

“I should have seen that coming,” I say.

“Albert!” Dante shouts. Before us he trembles, aging slowly before our eyes, withering as we stare in horror.

“We have to extract him now. He’s decaying with the room.”

Dante and I set to work, gripping the severed time strands and sliding them out of Albert, extricating him quickly from the fractured web of time in the room. With each strand that’s pulled through him, he spasms, but the aging slows and his breathing returns to normal. He still bears the marks of age from the accelerated entropy, but he’s free.

Around us the room continues to crumble, falling in at the corners, and turning to dust. If I hadn’t had Dante to help me there was no way I could have extracted him in time. Dante pulls Albert up, and the old scientist rests against our shoulders as we dash toward the front door.

Amid the crumbling of wood and walls, Albert leans into me and whispers something in my ear. With time crashing in on us, the words barely process in my distracted mind, but they lodge there. I don’t have time to contemplate their meaning now.

Outside, the others wait. Jost paces the porch and Erik leans against the frame of the house, but Valery grips the railing, looking out on the choppy waters of the bay.

“It worked?” Jost says, jumping to help Dante bring Albert into the night air.

“Yes, but we’ve got to get out of here. The house isn’t stable,” I say.

“My papers,” Albert says with a moan.

“Where are they?” Dante asks. “I’ll go for them.”

“My study. The third door on the second level.” Albert’s voice is small and tired.

Dante and I exchange a look. Going back in will be dangerous, but he rushes into the house before I can say anything to stop him.

“We should go now,” Valery calls.

“Let’s give him a minute to catch his breath,” Jost suggests.

“No!” Valery’s refusal startles me, and I turn to her. Her shape is small against the blank night sky, but I see why she’s pushing us. In the distance, an aeroship is hovering over the water, coming closer to the island by the second.

“We’ve got company,” I yell.

“Who?” Erik asks, coming to my side. “Kincaid?”

“I can’t tell,” I say.

Valery turns to us, and even in the dark I see her face is hollow. “The Guild.”

“How can you know that?” I ask.

She pauses, and I already dread her answer.

“Because I told them we would be here.”

FORTY

“WHAT?” I ASK, MY MIND TRYING TO process the rapidly decaying house behind me, the sight of the hovering aeroship in the distance, and Valery’s betrayal at the same time.

It’s a bit too much to take in at once.

But Erik has his gun drawn. “I thought you landing in our party was a little suspicious. What did it take, Valery?”

She cowers back and he moves forward, edging closer to her, but she doesn’t run from him. “They did things to me. You saw the labs, Erik. Don’t you remember?”

“And now you’ve conveniently had a change of heart?” he snarls.

“Erik!” I call in a sharp voice.

“It wasn’t like that,” Valery says. She points to me as tears begin to stream down her face. “They told me it was your fault. That if I helped them, I could have Enora back, but…”

“But?” I prompt.

“They tried to make me forget her. Make me want other things. Cormac said they made me normal, and that when I returned to Arras, I would be happy,” she says, choking as she speaks, “because I had served the Guild.”

“They sent you here to spy on us,” Erik accuses.

“I hated you,” Valery says to me. Her words implore me to understand, and part of me does. The part of me that blames myself for Enora’s death. “That hate became stronger until it was the only feeling I was sure was true. It consumed me. When I saw you that day in the grey market, I wanted to lure you into an alley and do what the Guild wouldn’t do.”

Icicles crawl down my spine, branching out in chills through my body. So I hadn’t imagined seeing Valery that day, but I didn’t know she had seen me, too.

“But you didn’t,” I say. “You didn’t do that, Valery. You’re better than they would let you be.”

“No, I followed orders. I led you to the shop, so that you would find the truth. Seek Kincaid and walk into their arms. They knew you would come here eventually, but only after you led Kincaid to the same place.”

Every moment has been engineered since we got here, carefully executed to ensure we would be standing here right now. Have all our decisions been so carefully directed by Valery? I consider how she warmed to us at the estate after being cold and unfriendly and then shifted back to coldness. Her connection with Deniel, the Tailor who attacked me. The rest is murky.

“You sent Deniel,” I accuse her, “so I would distrust Kincaid.”

“Cormac’s idea,” Valery admits. “He knew you would turn against him after you went snooping. We only had to get you to snoop.”

“Bit of a gamble,” Erik says.

“That’s the thing. The reason I’ve hated Adelice the most. She tries to do what’s right even at the cost of alliances and power.”

“And you hate me for that?”

“I hated you because it’s not that simple,” she cries. “Don’t you see what you’re sacrificing? Who you’re sacrificing?”

This time I advance on her, my fists balled, my body shaking. “I never wanted this. I’ve done the best I can. Do you want me to become another Creweler locked in a room doing the best I can? Or worse—Cormac?”

“I’m starting to understand.” Valery holds her hands out, stopping my advance and my words. “I tried to keep hating you, but I can’t anymore.”

“How is that even possible?” Jost asks, and it’s clear he doesn’t believe her.